A PLANETARY scientist and aerospace engineer who grew up in Alloa is set to deliver a lecture in Stirling this week on his work with NASA's mission to Titan.

Dr Ralph Lorenz, who was born in Lanark but grew up in the Wee County town, will talk about Saturn's giant moon and how it can provide clues on the building blocks of life.

He has worked for the European Space Agency on the design of the Huygens probe to Titan and as a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.

Dr Lorenz has also worked at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and has been involved in many NASA and international space projects.

These included the Cassini-Huygens mission to study Saturn and its system, including its famous giant moon.

The lecture will take place at the University of Stirling this Friday, January 17, and will be delivered to staff, students, local schoolchildren and members of the public.

Dr Loren said: "Saturn's giant moon Titan is remarkably Earth-like, with a landscape of vast dunefields, river channels and lakes under a smoggy sky punctuated by methane downpours.

"Titan serves as a frigid laboratory in which the same processes that shape our own planet can be seen in action under exotic conditions.

"It has a rich inventory of complex organic molecules that may provide clues how the building blocks of life are assembled.

"During this lecture, I will review findings from the epic Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, between 2004 and 2017, and discuss prospects for future exploration – with NASA having recently announced the Dragonfly mission, led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory."

It is understood Dr Lorenz will play a key role in the highly-anticipated Dragonfly mission.

The rotorcraft will fly multiple sorties to promising locations on Titan, looking for pre-biotic chemical processes common both there and closer to home on Earth.

It is a craft to go down in the history books as this will be the first time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science purposes on another world.

The eight rotors of the craft will take advantage of the four-times denser atmosphere and it will be the first vehicle to fly its entire science payload to various sites.

Titan could provide clues to how life may have arisen at home as it is thought to be analogous to the very early Earth.

This mission will take advantage of the 13 years of data collected during the Cassini-Huygens project.

Dr Lorenz added: "Dragonfly, which will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034, is an octocopter lander, able to repeatedly take off and fly tens of kilometres in Titan's dense atmosphere and low gravity to sample the surface in a wide range of geological settings."

Those interested in attending the lecture by Dr Lorenz can visit bit.ly/2RfGKPx to book a space for free.